Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds - form Summary
A Sonnet of Steadfast Love
Shakespeare uses the English sonnet's three quatrains and concluding couplet to present and affirm a definition of true love. Each quatrain builds contrasts—what love is not, what it is, and its resistance to time—culminating in the rhymed couplet that stakes the poet’s reputation on his claim. The tight volta into the couplet gives the poem its rhetorical force and definitive, courtroom-like close.
Read Complete AnalysesLet me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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